One of the things that I recognised last year was that I’ve been neglecting my practice of my faith and that I miss it. So Lent seemed like a good place to be more intentional about it.

I’m not giving anything up. I did consider all the usual things, chocolate, wine, gin but ultimately decided that this year I want to add to my life not subtract. So I’m participating in the Grace WhatsApp group this year, I didn’t get to Grace in February and I won’t get there in March (I’ve got the boys that weekend!), so this is a good way to stay connected, I’ll also try to get to the Lent meals but I’ve already got things I’m doing on a couple of them, so we’ll see how that goes.

Until they changed the words (I’m still not over that!), Mass, boring, plain Mass was important to me, Grace is fantastic but I love the repetition of Mass and communion, it’s probably a hangover from all those years of altar serving, when I went to Mass two to three times a week for four or so years. The problem has been that there isn’t a church locally, that I feel comfortable with, I won’t go to an RC church and the CoE churches are either too evangelical or too Anglo Catholic for me, I won’t go to a church that won’t except women can be priests or that pretends to be Catholic, be one and deal with having to obey or don’t.So as a consequence I hadn’t been to communion for an age. I did think about St Mary’s but it’s not happened yet, but I’m working five minutes away from St Pancras Church and they have lunchtime communion on Wednesdays (which is where I got ashed this week). So I’m going to go to communion every Wednesday because I think I need that in my life and my week.

That and a bit more time for reflection are my personal goals for Lent.

Lent shouldn’t be spent all inside my head, so I also need to do more. So every week in Lent, I’m going to donate to the foodbank. It’s easy enough to do, I donate sanitary towels every time I buy some for me. But this will be more intentional, £5 worth of goods every week. I’ll check the list in the supermarket and buy that, no clearing my cupboards (you’d be surprised how many people do), no thinking about what I would buy, but what the foodbank says it needs using my money because it’s less than a bottle of wine, for goodness sake.

6 Responses to Lent

A plot holder at our allotment site set up a collection for the local food bank last year for people to donate any fresh produce they had grown. I thought it such a wonderful idea, and everyone has been very generous. But you make an excellent point to donate items the banks need and it’s something we aspire to do more of too.

I’ve spent some time working at a food bank and although fresh produce is lovely, many people coming to the food bank for help, don’t have the facilties to store or cook it. E get lots of beans and pasta, but are lacking on food that people without much power or who are on the streets can use. Like I said every one is different depending on the needs on of those coming for help. Our allotments did a produce donation to a charity that makes a hot meal everyday. After several hours sorting well intentioned but useless donations (olives, dried pulses, fresh orange juice and fruit, and my personal favourite Himalayan sea salt!) I feel really strongly that people should read the lists!

Yes, I understand about fresh produce. The guy who organised our collection checked with the food bank first, and he’s had to rely on their help before so it was his way of saying thank you and giving something back, but you do make me wonder about local charities that provide cooked meals. I’ll look into that.
Himalayan sea salt! What a strange item to donate!

Didn’t mean to imply that the collection had been misguided just that checking with them first is the way forward! People are generally amazing but some of the donations are bizarre. Usually, you can see the thinkin behind them but some of them are clearly from people who’ve just cleared out their cupboards hence Himalayan sea salt! Did you see the thing from a food bank that had a ton of food donated from before decimalisation, who would donate a tin from 1972 ish?

To be honest, it was something I questioned at the set up! I wasn’t sure fresh vegetables would be that useful, but it turns out it is.
My neighbour has jars of stuff in her fridge that went out of date 15 years ago so it doesn’t surprise me that people have ancient things in their cupboards. It’s a shame people think it’s ok to donate it to a food bank though. The bin would have been much easier for everyone involved.